Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

A springy, rhythmic way of moving forward, similar to a horse’s gait and ideally induced by elation. It’s about Self-Expression. It’s about Non-violence. It’s about Conservation…

In any case, as a quick look at the video will show, it’ll revolutionize one’s image.

###

As we Prance!, we might recall that it was on this date in 1913 that Georgia Ann Thompson “Tiny” Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane. At age 15, Tiny (so named as she was 5 feet tall and weighed 85 pounds), visited a carnival at which the dramatic climax was a parachute jump from a balloon. Enthralled, Tiny joined the show and became a star attraction. In 1913, the troupe was in Los Angeles, where Tiny met pilot Glenn L. Martin, who asked Tiny to test out an airplane trap seat he had designed… she did, and history was made.

As we commit ourselves to continuous improvement, we might recall that it was on this date in 1878 that C.A. Parker (Harvard, Class of 1880) won the first American bicycle race, run at Beacon Trotting Park in Allston (Massachusetts), a half-mile course designed for sulky racing. A Doubletree Hotel currently stands on the spot.

But as reader MK points out, in India poles are a guy’s domain– and are the locus of some pretty extraordinary moves; here, a look at the traditional sport– it dates back at least as far as the Twelfth Century– they call “Mallakhamb“…

As we marvel at the mastery, we might recall that it was on this date in 1952 that Agatha Christie’s mystery play The Mousetrap opened in London’s West End– where it has run, without interruption, since.

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….– George Bernard Shaw

Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.– Noel Coward

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.– William Faulkner, on Mark Twain

As we consider that this may in any case be better than log-rolling, we might recall that it was on this date in 1982 that a member of the Hollywood nobility– two-time Oscar-winning actress, model, and anti-war activist Jane Fonda– released her first exercise tape.

Building on the success of her workout book, published the prior year, the tape helped Fonda popularize workouts for women, workouts in groups, workout videos, and indeed aerobics in general (a family of trends on which Richard Simmons, Judi “Jazzercise” Missett and many others have ridden). Fonda invested the proceeds of what became a fitness empire into the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an advocacy group founded by her then-husband Tom Hayden (of Chicago Eight renown). Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1989, and Fonda retired from the spotlight (though, of course, she has returned to the movie screen in the last few years).